


don't open your eyes: you won't like what you see

by Anonymous



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Abduction, Boredom, Hurt/Comfort, Introversion, Metafiction, Obsessive Behavior, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Original Character(s), Other, Psychological Horror, Real Life, Stockholm Syndrome, The Doctor (Doctor Who) Whump, This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, Torture, Unrequited Love, the doctor is about to become so, the reader is a little bit mentally ill
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:55:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28100535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: He fixes you with a heated, penetrating glare that makes you nearly shiver with pleasure. You can see every century in that look, every genocide, every grief. It's why you're here, why you're risking so much, why you're still five feet away instead of laying hands on him. When he speaks, it's with pure, dread-laden imperative.‘Then let me go.’
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Reader
Comments: 22
Kudos: 26
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Because I got a little bit sick of Reader/Doctor fics that never really hit the spot. And there's only one thing to do when you can't find the fic you want to read: be the change you want to see in the world! I joked about writing something like this for a long time and finally got around to it. Work has been very stressful, and I get grumpy and toppy when I'm stressed. 
> 
> What would _you_ do if you had a Doctor to yourself?  
> 1) Something like this: in which case you'll love this fic.  
> 2) Nothing like this: in which case you'll find this fic an interesting exploration of a very unhinged individual who is, oddly, just like you.
> 
> There's really just one warning: the graphic depictions of violence are depicted graphically, so, tread carefully?

His head jerks up when you open the door. Wide eyes, thin mouth; he’s startled, but not scared.

You probably weren’t quite what he was expecting. 

Confident is too strong a word, too dangerous, when your captive has bested every jailer he’s faced – but you’ll admit to a thrill of satisfaction as you walk into the cellar. Your favourite clothes, a sensible twist in the well-worn boots and heavy denim, your hair clean and styled: you look impenetrable. The nice pair of undies, for a change. Some things are worth dressing up for. 

You’re hardly a kidnapper, though, and you can see the cogs whirling behind his eyes as he works to figure it out. He’s probably got you pinned down within seconds; human, 21st century, not particularly special. Bit of an introvert. Judging by the firm authority of his jaw, the relaxed curl of his hands within the manacles, he hasn’t gleaned much of your motives. 

‘Who are you working for?’ he demands. His voice is clear and strong, dark pupils keenly focussed. Not knocked out as well as promised, then. It’s another of those little reminders, the twists of doubt in your stomach: that you’ve been _lucky_ to get this far. 

You want to admit it – _I’m not working for anybody –_ and draw another of those aching, overlarge reactions from him. But you’ve got to be sensible, patient. Talking to the Doctor is like giving a rifle to a killer. 

Instead, you throw the question back at him: ‘Haven’t you figured it out?’ 

If the Doctor is rattled by this, he covers it as rapidly as he speaks – ‘Torchwood? UNIT? Van Statten? Because I can promise you, whoever it is, whatever they’ve told you, they’re lying.’

‘I’m sure they are,’ you agree easily, as if consoling a child. You take a step closer to him, drinking in every intake of breath, the slight flare of his nostrils, the way his too-expressive eyes visibly flick through each thought like papers in a sheath. He reads like a fairytale. 

‘You have no idea what you’re doing,’ the Doctor grits out, finding his feet and standing to his full height – as if he were towering over you instead of chained to a wall. ‘You need to let me go.’

You ponder how long you’d like to play this game. You enjoy him like this; determined bravery, no lesser for all his trepidation. He curls his hands around the chains – of course, concealing a careful touch along each link as he does so – straining forward with an urgency disguised as threat. 

‘I wonder how far along you are,’ you say, taking great delight in the words as they unfold in your mind, picking up their own momentum, ‘You’ve figured out how to put gel in your hair, but you’re on your own.’ You lean forward and show him a slow, deliberate smile. ‘Who did you lose? Rose? Martha?’ 

Fear runs him through like a javelin. Whatever earnest spectre he’d entertained before has vanished, the dark, ugly core of him spitting out from the cracks. ‘You need to be very, very careful,’ he growls, his voice picking up speed, spinning out from under him, ‘Because if I find out you’ve done something, _anything_ to them, there won’t be a warning. Now _tell me who you are_.’

Careful. Don’t want to seem too petulant. You could drop so much more, scare him with knowledge he hasn’t even fathomed, crack him wide open with a single name – but you can’t get carried away. Keep your tricks up your sleeve, because with the Doctor, sooner or later you’re going to need them. 

‘Come on,’ you say, crossing your arms – it’s awkwardness, on you, and it gives you a place to hide the tapping of your fingers and the bitten edges of your nails, ‘You’re clever. Figure it out.’

He’s so very vulnerable to that. 

He squints around the cellar, sweeping you up in one of those mercurial whiplashes of mood. ‘What’s this, then? ‘Cause it doesn’t look much like a prison, no, bit too homemade. Can’t be a very big budget operation,’ he sniffs, tugging at the chains. ‘And these: not particularly subtle, are they?’ His voice jumps into the peevish tone of a dissatisfied customer. ‘Very old fashioned. So what are you, then? Ransomers? Slavers? Scientists?’ With a recoil, he takes another exaggerated look at his surroundings. ‘I certainly hope not. _Terrible_ laboratory.’

You watch this performance with amusement. ‘Well done,’ you say, with an equally fatuous grin – and wait for his manic expression to fade, for fury to cast his eyes like blown glass. 

‘You know who I am,’ he continues, voice drifting back into that lower register. ‘So you already know you’re making a really, _really_ big mistake.’

‘Of course,’ you say, giving him a reasonable shrug. ‘If you escaped, I wouldn’t stand a chance. I know.’

 _If_ he escapes _._ He might just...but you don’t think he will. 

He fixes you with a heated, penetrating glare that makes you nearly shiver with pleasure. You can see every century in that look, every genocide, every grief. It’s why you’re here, why you’re risking so much, why you’re still five feet away instead of laying hands on him. When he speaks, it’s with pure, dread-laden imperative. ‘Then let me go.’

Last chance. The precipice makes you shudder, the sheer adrenaline of looking over the edge and realising how far down you could fall. Something outside and beyond you takes a breath that is not your own, a hardness settling into your face that you don’t recognise. 

You say it: _‘No.’_

As quick as it had brewed within him, the anger dissipates. He relaxes back against the wall, rocking his heels – and subtly curling the last two digits of his right hand around the shackle enclosing it. He peers around, as if he’s truly distracted, and nods at the door. ‘Ought to get a better lock, then.’

You’ve been very deliberate to keep this low-tech. Thick padlocks, deadbolts on each of the two doors. You’d rather he defeated a lock than hijack an electronic system: he could rig up any number of threats, given an AC current and a microprocessor. Picking eight consecutive locks takes _time_ , and that’s all you need to subdue him. 

It also takes dexterity. He has such lovely hands. It’s an enormous shame – but you can’t tolerate the risk. 

You take the plastic shopping bag you’d brought in with you, and upend it beside the sink at the far wall. Metal and plastic clatter on the surface, and you’d love to lay it all out carefully, prepare your field well so that, when the time comes, your focus need never wander from your task. But that’ll give him too much to work with, and it’ll pigeon-hole your behaviour into an archetype he can exploit. 

You consider the logistics, running through each possibility in your mind, before you take the can of butane you bought two weeks ago and attach the lighter. A blunt instrument would be more fun, but who knows how quick his reaction time is, or if he’s already found some way to slip himself free. The blade of a knife carries the most visual appeal, but it suffers from the same faults. There’s always the risk he’ll grab it, blade or not, and turn it against you. The Doctor isn’t the type to strike you with a weapon – until he is.

You understand, now, how people fuck this up. You want to tell him every idea, every image soaking in your mind’s eye, anticipate, see what he does with the revelation. But you know better than to monologue. You ignite the blowtorch, turn up the gas, and let the sound thrum across the room, gentle warmth radiating across your hands, icy with adrenaline. 

It sounds like a little jet plane, you think. That low-level roar of a long-haul flight, the sound of hydrocarbons tearing into oxygen and carbon dioxide, the birth of heat and light. 

After a quick check of your grip – and how, _how_ , after all the times you’ve practiced, how could you possibly not know where to place your hand – you approach him. 

The Doctor’s head snaps back to centre. He’d been looking at something, while you had your back turned. Mistake number two. His body shies back into the wall, muscles tensed and ready. ‘What are you doing?’ 

You keep as much distance as the flame allows, torch carefully pointed away from your body and towards his own – oh, he’s scared, he’s breathing so fast, his pupils are clawing at his irises – and, one last check of your sweaty palm. Your heart is pounding nearly out of your chest. This is it. 

A soloist under the spotlight, a thousand held breaths, a keg of gunpowder ready to blow.

Showtime. 

You raise the cone of flame to his clenched fist, and after a few logistical difficulties – _he screams, he tears his body away from you with slack you didn’t realise he had, a knee flailing towards you, garbled pleas –_ you have a good angle, a good depth, and you hold the blowtorch in position.

You’re so focussed that the sights and sounds and smells hardly register. Nothing matters but the golden sparks forging the edges of the cuffs, the metal cherry-red, then yellow, then white, the char of skin bubbling and curling like burning papers, and you wait another second to be sure, count it under your breath, and then another. You pull away. 

The noises he makes. God, the noises. He moans in what must be absolute agony, trying to curl around his injured limb and cut short by the chains. He’s gasping so violently he isn’t taking anything in; like a fish out of water, choking on air he can’t breathe. 

The smell of burnt flesh and hair seizes your nostrils. It’s addictive and nauseating. You take a deep, shaky breath – but when you exhale, calm rushes in to fill the dead space. 

He’s terrified, _horrified_. He manages to look at you for a moment, and you see that bright, clever mind stripped down to an instinct trapped within a failing body, fighting for its life. 

You’ve heard immolation is the most painful way to die. You wonder if fire is still his greatest fear, or if he’s found worse things than pain and death to be afraid of. 

The torch is still lit in your hand, cleaving the air with pressurised flame. 

His eyes follow your line of sight, and he panics. ‘Please,’ he gasps, ‘stop, _stop_.’ He’s so shameless in his honesty, you feel obliged to let him catch his breath. 

You want to apologise, or perhaps say something cruel and final. Instead, you just watch him, breathing laboured with pain, torn between keeping his eyes glued to you and wanting to look at his hand. He swallows, about to say something, before the words are knotted up in a grimace. 

You walk to his other side – you wish you could grab his forearm, hold him steady, make this quicker and easier – and more carefully, you line up the torch with his right hand. 

He starts screaming before the jet of flame ever touches him. Shrieks, deafening, breaking his voice on its own pitch when he’s too hysterical to take breath, body arched away and curled up at once. The more he writhes, the more his hand wedges itself into the metal circlet of the shackle, hot enough to glow. He manages another strangle of a scream before his lungs fail him. When the skin is black and mottled, peeling off his knuckles to expose a creamy white below, you stop. 

He’s trembling uncontrollably, breaths so quick and fast they remind you of a trapped rabbit. Satisfied that for now, he can’t outmanoeuvre you, and probably doesn’t have the presence of mind even if he could, you get within striking distance. The Doctor shakes his head, throwing it back as he clenches his teeth and groans helplessly, panting through the gaps in his teeth. 

You still have the torch going. You won’t switch it off – not yet. Not until you’re out of reach. 

This close, you can inspect your work. The Doctor is fixated on the hand furthest from you, trying to wriggle it, and you watch the fingertips – yellowed bones, eschar sloughing off them – manage the barest flex, like the curled-up, black legs of a dying fly. 

The smell is awful. Surrounding the worst of the burns, just below the shackles, his skin is mottled bright red and ripe for blistering. You reach out to touch it. He flinches violently, but there’s nowhere to go – and you run your fingers along the exposed stretch of forearm above his sleeve. His eyes meet yours – pupils dilated, whites bloodshot – and he watches you with sheer incomprehension as you stroke his burnt skin with the back of a knuckle. 

He feels—soft. So, so soft, like silk, warm and fresh on your clammy, cold hands. His whole arm jerks away from your touch, the chains clinking gently as he withdraws. 

You step back, holding his eye contact with intent while you tighten off the nozzle on the gas. The flame swallows itself. 

The Doctor looks as if he might sob with relief. He permits one shudder of a breath before collapsing back onto his heels. After a pause, he drops his head from the line of your gaze. ‘What’s your name,’ he whispers, kind, agonised. 

‘You’d escape,’ you say simply, by way of explanation. ‘I spent a long time thinking about how to stop you. You’re too good at clever. So,’ you say, double-checking the gas knob before you set the torch down, ‘I decided to go with primitive.’

‘Odd name,’ he gasps.

It’s sad to have him damaged so soon. Worse, still, is that you’ve only dealt with half of the equation: open the door, and he could still _walk out_. You know you ought to get the rest over and done with, do the _safe_ thing, the sensible thing. 

But you do ache to see it happen like this. 

He looks at you, wary eyes following every twitch of muscle as you make your way to the side of the cellar and pull up a folding chair. There’s a pity in his eyes, a great sadness as he watches you do so. 

You take a seat opposite him, and wait for him to reveal his next move. 

He takes a shaky, pained breath, composes himself with effort, and says, ‘You don’t need to do this.’

You were almost disappointed before. To just _crumple_ the second you hurt him, screaming and pleading like it didn’t matter – where was that unshakeable determination? The courage to fight an unwinnable battle, the fortitude to see it through? But his stoicism seems to have battened itself down on a different battlefield: forgiving you. Finding something worth saving. 

It’s impossible not to admire him for it, to love him. 

What he doesn’t know is that your inherent goodness doesn’t sit in opposition to the part of you that enjoyed torturing him: the two are entwined in your soul like lovers. 

‘No, I don’t need to,’ you murmur, reverent as his acute pain settles into a dull, tired throb echoing from his body into his soul. ‘That’s what makes it worth doing.’

The Doctor risks a look up at one of his hands and visibly pales. Another breath. ‘What have you done with her? Martha. Whatever you want, I’ll do it. Just let her go.’

It’s so unexpected, you have to stifle a giggle. You hadn’t expected to approach this so soon, have to wrestle with your answer – your third mistake – do you tell him? Do you leave him hanging, torment him with the fear of what might be happening the next door down? You can’t decide what’s worse. 

You decide against lying while on the spot, because he’ll see through it, and your hegemony on the truth is crucial. ‘No Donna yet?’ 

Even through his haze, the name filters down through his memory. ‘Donna?’ he starts, shocked, scared all over again, ‘How do you—where is she?’ The situation seems to be spiralling out of his control. He’s frantic, trying to think through whatever it is that clouds him – pain, shock, drowsiness – and piece together how it fits. 

‘Ah,’ you say. ‘And the Titanic?’ 

He’s white. Silent. Yes, you think you know where he’s from, now. 

Aware that further conversation is no longer an option, you get back to your feet. This next step might be a little tricky, but you’re relying on the way you have him restrained: legs slightly spread, a couple of inches of chain between his ankles and the wall. You think the angles will make it very difficult to hurt you. You’re also relying on the pain, the disbelief reverberating through his lean, wiry little body and injured mind. If he summons enough sense for an attack, he’ll need to use his wrists as leverage. You’ll take that risk for the fascination of seeing whether he can bring himself to do it.

Back to the sink. There’s a little ring of soot around the vent of the blow torch, and you delight in pressing your finger to the metal before you know if it will burn. Finding it lukewarm, you swipe off some of the blackened grease and stroke it over the pad of your thumb, every whorl and ridge highlighted in vivid relief.

The Doctor is deathly quiet. This time, you angle your body to keep him within your sight while you retrieve the knife from within the tangle of items. It’s solid and grounding in your palm, designed to be carried and used where an aerosol can never could. It’s a large blade, straddling the divide between a bowie knife and a machete. 

All the tension in your body flocks to the point where the weapon joins your hand, riding the centre of gravity as it shifts from your upper arm to your wrist. Your fist is blanched white with strain where your body is loose, agile. You take stock of your expression before you turn to face him. 

At first, those threatened sobs seem about to break the surface, but the Doctor bites down on the edge of an inhale. He’s holding his breath. Rigid as he is with panic, you can see his mind throwing its might at the situation; looking between the restraints, the door, the chair just out of his reach, the indiscriminate set of tools in the far corner.

You crouch beside him, and you’re both surprised and charmed that he chooses to pull as far away from you as possible instead of lashing out with a foot. You crave to touch him, bursting with the need to slip the knife beneath the cuff of his trouser leg, stroke the delicate contour of his calf, shave off little curls of hair and watch them float to the floor. But you’ve waited too long, given too much to throw yourself away on the bough of that pleasure. 

Instead, you flip the blade of the knife towards him, and put your full weight into slashing through the back of his left ankle. 

He keeps his iron grip on his breath a moment longer, until his leg folds and his balance fails, scrabbling for control of his own voice as he cries out, barely catching his stance on the opposite leg. You don’t hesitate, don’t waste so much as a second before you rend open the hard knot of muscle on that leg, too, with a vicious arc of your wrist. But you’re too confident, _careless,_ put too little effort behind this swing and you have to make a second pass, have to saw at the rubbery grisle of his tendon before it snaps.

Too much, too fast, he screams like tearing metal, the grind of machinery coming to catastrophic failure, like a soul torn from its body. 

Messy. You were _messy_. Blood wells and soaks through the back of his trousers, the raw gashes winking like mouths as he instinctively tucks his feet beneath him and his ankles spread apart like the broken spine of a book.

You ought to be pleased with yourself. Whatever he’d expected from you, you’d caught him unaware enough that he’d missed a chance to stop you; attack, slip out of the path of the knife and give you the chance to injure yourself. 

But your fuck-up still annoys you. The satisfaction you’d felt after the first cut has turned sour, and you find yourself scraping off the mould and pretending the dish is unspoilt.

His filthy white Converse grow pink, then orange-red, and the Doctor’s eyes, weakly shut, turn to the absent skies as he sobs, like a heretic praying to their God. Perhaps he is. 

You check his suspended wrists, in case they’re about to slip free from the shackles under his weight. If anything, the burns have made his hands more secure: congested with swelling and incompressible within the leathery cast of skin, they can’t curl up inside the metal circlet. On his right, a strip of dark, bubbled skin has sheared entirely off the flesh, torn off by the metal cuff where it had abruptly carved its way up his forearm. 

The chair is waiting for you, but you’re now at liberty to pull it closer. You listen to the feverish puffs of breath as his sobs quieten and examine the knife. It’s almost clean, except for a few specks of blood and a thin line of red highlighting the edge of the blade. His blood is cold to the touch, a vivid crimson against your index finger. It tastes of iron and factory-fresh plastic and, just perceptibly, tingles like menthol on your tongue.

The realisation crashes on you like the slow, inexorable breaking of a wave. You’ve made your opening statement. You’ve all but eliminated his chances of escape. And now you’re free to take your time with him: to get to know his reactions, his fears, his strengths, his ultimate breaking point.

It’s with that new clarity that you look at him, unafraid to show the longing in your eyes, _proud_ of him hanging there and refusing to give in.

‘Breathe,’ you say – because he barely has since you last spoke. And, with effort, he does. The sheer notion of obedience hits you in the chest, as unexpected as a blow, and just as damaging. The smile has already raced across your face before you’ve realised why: a bright adoration, so fierce and gentle you immediately seal back inside your heart. It isn’t of use, and may well be of harm.

You drink from the overflowing cup before you while you wait for him to gather himself, as he will do for you, over and over again. The Doctor looks at you with the utmost pity, as if it’s sorrow instead that causes him such agony, eyes so full of suffering you can hardly distinguish _who_ he hurts for. He’s nearly dripping with sweat; brow shining wet, forelock damp and sticky. Grey-faced. False tears have squeezed out of the corners of his eyes and left his lashes far too dry. He opens his mouth, and it might have been to say something, but he gags instead and tries to shift in the chains. Something, anything to take that unbearable weight off his arms and hands. 

You feel oddly nervous. Off-script.

The Doctor shifts again and moans. His voice is dry, skipping like a needle on a record when he speaks. ‘I don’t—please. Just tell me what you want.’

There’s a despair in his voice that suggests he already knows the answer.

Your soul sings inside you as you say it, resonating with a belief made reality. ‘I want the same things that you want, Doctor,’ your quiet introspection splits like the skin of a fruit, a passion bubbling up through your throat that you won’t ever, ever allow to be seen, but _he_ sees it, you know he always sees it, ‘I want to _do_ something, I want to feel _alive_.’

You can see it swirling in his head like muddy water, round and round, trying to put the words together. And he can’t. 

He’s long strayed off the path and into the woods as he falls back onto an old, tired line of defence: ‘You call this _living_?’ Having expended what little reserve he had on that one misguided assertion, he winces, cries out, contorts himself towards an imagined position that might give him relief from the pain.

‘No,’ you say. ‘It’s as close to _touching_ life as either of us will ever get.’

You think you might leave him to stew for a bit. So, you get to your feet, fold the chair back against the wall. Sweep all your goodies into the recycled-plastic shopping bag and loop it over your forearm. 

He looks at you with a tragic urgency that speaks the words he can’t bring himself to say – _don’t leave me like this, please don’t leave me –_ but even as you step through the door, he stays silent.

-

You watch him for a brief while. Of course, the first thing he does is try to escape the cuffs; he even manages to balance tenuously on a foot, wobbling as he tries to gain some leverage. He falls, again, and you can’t quite hear him, nor can you see the expressions on his face through the cheap plastic of the peephole. Cameras would have been too risky. He tries, and fails, and he tries, and tries, and tries.

You know it’s essentially impossible for him to get out of the chains, and even if he does, he’ll need a small miracle to make it to the door. 

On further thought, you wonder if you ought to go for his kneecaps. But you’d prefer to punish an escape attempt, even at the cost of preventing one. 

You’re anxious anyway. All your ideas have paled before the light of the blazing sun locked in your personal Pandora’s box, too bright to open. 

You don’t sleep much that night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I absolutely don't endorse the actions contained in this fic. Please don't transport a whole case of water bottles by hand, you'll hurt your back.

It’s only about seven hours before you return. You’ve woken up on edge; heart pounding as your memory boots up and you realise where you are, what you’re doing. _Who_ you are, now. 

You bring a first aid kit, a bottle of water, and a plastic bucket. 

Before you lose your nerve, the fear that somehow, _somehow_ he’s gone and it’s all over, you unlock the door. 

You shouldn’t have worried. He’s barely moved an inch. You note, with some pride, that he’s just about managed to balance on his feet like collapsible tentpoles. 

He doesn’t react, doesn’t look at you, grim-faced as he stares a hole into the floor. What little of his shirt you can see is stained with sweat, hair gel nearly melted off his scalp. You want to imagine you can see tear tracks down his cheeks, but it’s only a fancy. 

You take a deep, steadying breath, and walk up to him. He might not look at you, but he does tense. 

You set the bucket down, two feet away. ‘Sleep well?’ you say, by way of greeting. He won’t reply. 

You do so like it when he’s stubborn.

You crouch down, the overstuffed red case in your lap, the water bottle laid by your feet. He flinches when you reach across to lift the leg of his trousers. 

The wound has been filled in by thick coagulum, the colour of burnt ochre and volcanic rock. It oozes sluggishly as he wobbles on his feet. 

You dig around in the first aid kit until you find a pair of shears, a bandage, and an antiseptic. 

As you form a gentle grip around his calf, shears ready in your other hand, the Doctor seems to consider fighting you off. But you’ve threatened his already tenuous balance, like blowing on a house of cards, and he clearly rethinks the attempt. He’ll only be fighting himself; the chains give him less than a hand’s width of movement forwards, the shackles rub against those deep, open gashes, and there’s nothing but gravity to hold him up. 

Gently, you nudge the cuff off his ankle and up his calf, and you hear his breathing grow shallow, beating in time with the rustle of chains overhead. 

Careful, reverent, you slip the shears beneath his trousers and start to cut. Only a few snips up towards the back of his knee, and you can almost feel him freeze. But that’s all you need, and as you let the shackle fall and finish cutting a neat column of fabric off the hem, he takes a shaky breath and allows you to pull it free. The cotton twill is both crusted with dry blood and damp in the centre. You toss the scrap to the side. 

At last, you can run a hand down his bare skin – the muscles of his calf are so loose, adrift, a dense bulk of contraction with no tension – his hair is soft where it should be wiry, skin refrigerator-cold where your fingers instinctively expect warmth. 

You can sense the reaction to your touch spreading beneath his chest like a bruise, unsure if it will bloom into the surface. The deciding factor seems to be that against all common sense, he still doesn’t appear to understand what you’re doing or why. Perhaps he’d expected brutality – perhaps he’d already expected reason from you, and paid an impossible price for his mistake. 

The cuff of his shoe, still laced tight, keeps brushing the wound, so you slide the shears along the bone of his ankle and with some effort, cut the tough canvas apart. 

‘ _What are you_ —’ he hisses, the first thing he’s said, and you’re pleased to hear him angry again. An authority unto himself. 

You pull apart the side of the shoe with both hands, scissors curled in your palm, and he strikes. Stupid, _stupid_ , you hadn’t noticed him shifting his weight to his arms, hadn’t appreciated his pained hiss, hadn’t thought—and the force bowls you over, sprawling on the concrete, as if he’d thrown you by the arm instead of kicked it away. The shears clatter across the floor.

In the moment before your pain registers, you knock both feet out from under him with a sweep of your foot. He goes down like the World Trade Centre. The ground-up yelp that bursts from his mouth helps to cover your grunt of breath; it would have been a curse if you hadn’t been so busy trying to stay quiet and think ahead.

Your hand feels numb, a fierce ache spreading from your forearm to your fingertips. You’re already on your feet, wiggling your fingers to make sure they still work, and when you stand up you find yourself at eye-height with him. The Doctor glares an ashamed hatred at you. He seems to have mastered getting out of this predicament; fumbling his heels under him, delicately positioned as his shoulders strain to hoist himself up. The loose shoe is giving him some grief.

You note that the effort has made him start bleeding again. His thigh is trembling with fatigue. 

Your forearm smarts as you cradle it, your crossed arms an ineffective disguise. ‘Should I get a helmet and some oven gloves?’ you say, too fond to sound truly irritated. 

‘You should _let me go_ ,’ he growls, but the roughness of his voice is no longer borne from threat.

As you bend to pick up the shears, you marvel at how much _force_ went into that blow, so quick you’re not entirely sure how he’d managed to hit you. You’re not injured, you think, but your fingers are tingling, your forearm growing a sizeable goose-egg. It’s one thing, in theory, to know he’s stronger, faster than a human. In person, it unsettles you like the sound of footsteps in an empty house.

This time, you come at his foot from behind, scissors first. You don’t let yourself hesitate, don’t let yourself wonder if you’re about to be seriously hurt. It will do just as much damage if he thinks he’s scored a point.

Instead, you wrap your hand around his calf, and steady him upright. He inhales hard enough that you’d call it a gasp under better circumstances, and as you support his weight – so much heavier than you’d realised, your best efforts are little more than a splint – the _relief_ cascading through his slender body is palpable. The balance of probability veers off-course as he updates his options; the weighting on each outcome scrolling frantically like an arrivals board. Is it worth fighting? Can he afford to do anything but?

The summation of these is intoxicating: he can’t be sure of your next move. That you’ve made him doubt himself so soon is...something else.

You continue to brace him upright, never looking at his face, leaving no room for his permission as you cut through his shoelaces. He doesn’t stop you. You briefly play out the idea of punishing his implicit trust, his weakness in the face of succour. It’s like a drug – the second it ends, you crave more, more – but as always, patience is the crux of the matter. It’s when he’s most certain of his mind that you need to break his trust in it.

You ease the bloodstained shoe over his toes as delicately as you can, trying to stop it from hurting unnecessarily, trying to keep him from tipping over. He resists you so little, he’s almost helping. So quick to accept relief. His maroon socks are soiled with the rusty charcoal of blood, the fabric moist with sweat as you peel it off his foot like a sunburn. If the skin of his leg had been unnaturally cool, here it feels icy enough to burn.

Sitting back on your heels, you watch him feel out the ground beneath his feet. His toes curl into the concrete, digging into the grit. Something compels you – perhaps curiosity, or the need to touch, taste, _consume_ , still unfulfilled and growing within you like a cancer – to press the damp material of his sock to your nose and inhale. You’re expecting something ugly; wet odour, musk, something—well. Human. Some proof that he isn’t so untouchable, so beyond your own comprehension that the mundanity you’ve become accustomed to no longer applies to him. But you smell nothing, only rubber and the dust of ancient books.

He’s watching you with nothing short of horror. You’ve never seen a look quite like it cross his face. Disgust, yes, but the emotion is clearly inadequate for a naked obsession that isn’t science or sadism or sex.

You shudder as you take a fresh breath, and work on removing his other shoe. 

You’ve almost slipped it free when he startles, tensing palpably beneath your hands, and you don’t quite pick up on why until you release his leg and he’s left to fall on his own balance. He groans, shifting to carry more weight on his shoulders, exerting force through his thighs in an unnatural stance that, for now, still holds. 

You settle yourself more comfortably on the floor, flexing the fingers of your hand to ease the ongoing throb. The first-aid kit is lying where you left it, items neatly laid atop it. In the uncomfortable void carved out by his silence, you daub a little antiseptic onto a dressing pad, and work the dried blood off his heel. It stings; his inhale sharpens towards a hiss, but it doesn’t last long before the pain fades, and he unwillingly eases into the touch. He doesn’t flinch when you have to scrub at the ragged edges of his wound, he even starts to look a little pinker once you wrap the bandage in a firm figure-eight around his ankle.

Cleaning up the other foot passes in an entirely different, equally teetering balance – the sense that the Doctor is chewing on his thoughts, about to break his silence. And you want him to speak. You want it badly enough you’d sacrifice addressing him first; you nearly have already, and you bite down on the same mistake that has been made by so many others before you.

His wounds tended to, your work satisfactory, you step back and regard him. His anger has slipped a few gears into a wary exhaustion, gilt with a conflicting need to be left alone and to do whatever is necessary to make you release him. 

Your hands are bloodied, the crimson smudges collecting into thin pen-lines around your nails. His gaze follows you as you circle around him to pick up the bottle of water, a few rolls away from where you’d set it down. 

It’s still chilled, the pearly mist of condensation giving way to rivulets of water that pool their way from the plastic to your fingers. You crack the cap with your uninjured hand, and as you take large, greedy gulps, the Doctor regards you with an anxious hunger. 

You smile at him; that sad, fond love, a prophylactic grief as you meet those bright, warm eyes. ‘You must be thirsty,’ you chide him, and approach. 

It is the closest you’ve ever been to his face. His lower lip is ragged in the centre, the lines of his face now drawn in sweat and grease. The first few locks of hair, downy and fine, are plastered to his brow. His eyes quiver, hummingbird-fast as he tracks the plastic bottle through every minute movement, offered in your outstretched hand. 

You place the mouth of the bottle just beneath his nose. His jaw, previously slack, now snaps shut. He bares his neck proudly, head twisted aside. 

‘Come on,’ you say softly, your voice feather-light, the kind you use with a stray kitten, or a nervous pet. ‘It’s just water.’

Such big eyes; brown and full, that enormous mind welling behind them – to think it must be whirling under there, calculating probabilities faster than a supercomputer. Over a bottle of Evian. 

He catches his lip in his teeth for what must be the hundredth time, the thousandth time, shifting to get comfortable, breathing through his nose with hesitation. With a clench of his jaw, he finally lowers his mouth to the bottle, lips sticking as they part. 

It is, in some ways, like trying to coax a child into eating a vegetable. 

You press the bottle further into his mouth, feeling the clack of teeth, the crawl of his skin. And, slowly, you tip – at first, he only allows the water to trickle into his mouth, until the moisture soaks into his tongue and he chases it with desperation, draining the bottle until it crumples under the suction. 

Empty, you draw back and examine the neck of the bottle where a smear of saliva forms a thick, uneven veil around the rim. You clasp your lips around it, inverting the bottle until those now-warm drops slide down the side, and taste deeply. Sweet. The inside of his mouth must be so sweet. Ketones, perhaps, or some other property you may never truly have the capacity to perceive.

It occurs to you that he must have tasted _you_ , as well. You run your tongue over your teeth. 

A few dribbles of water have escaped the corners of his mouth, running briskly off his chin like they’re being chased, disappearing into the damp edges of his collar. His eyes are closed in a sort of relaxed loathing.

 _Patience_ feels like a knife twisted through your spine, paralysing you where you stand. You want so much more. You aren’t done, you aren’t nearly done, you’re not even finished with _logistics_. You want to take a leaf of gauze to the swollen, blistered shapes of his hands, tend to the raw skin beneath his wrists. You want to unbutton his jacket so you can see his ribs strain as he breathes.

You think, however, that with a mind so prone to overthinking, less is more. 

Last chore. You take the plastic bucket, and set it down between his feet. Not of much use to him, clothed in as many layers as he is, but the statement is quite clear. You aren’t going to let him down for a long time.

Whatever he might have thought about this is rapidly overtaken by his realisation that you’re turning to leave. He lurches in the chains, slips, only just catches himself on one arm with a miserable wince. ‘Wait,’ he snarls, stops mid-breath, realises he has nothing to demand with, ‘Please, don’t go. Not yet.’

You feel an uncontrollable surge of affection. So close, and you still can’t have him, you can mutilate him but you can’t even _touch_ him—but he doesn’t mean it. You need him to mean it.

Patience.

And what if he escapes? What if this is all you ever have, and you’ve wasted it all on a few moments of silence and the second-hand taste of his lips?

No amount of forethought could have been enough. You were never prepared for this.

-

You find that the next twenty-eight hours pass easier. Now that anxiety isn’t gnawing into the pit of your stomach, you’re ravenously hungry. You dig your way through a bag of crisps, and as your body tires of the fat and salt, you pour a glass of soda to appease your sweet tooth, too. 

Your heart still beats a little thready, but you settle well enough into the rhythms of a lazy day: flopped on the couch, the throw rug nestled over your body. Satisfaction flows out of your stomach and curls through your veins like a Valium. You tuck a cushion under your head and flick on the TV. 

Idly, you sit through a few episodes of that Netflix show everybody keeps saying you’ll love, it just doesn’t get good until Season 2.You continue to ignore a message you’ve been putting off replying to for two weeks. Earphones in, you scroll through your notifications, glancing occasionally at the TV to read the captions. 

After a quick change of clothes, you head to the shops: enviro-bags tucked under your arm, phone and keys in your back pocket. 

The grocery store is both familiar and entirely new. All you can think about as you browse the shelves is how delighted he’d be, chattering excitedly over the lollies and heads of broccoli and laundry liquid and boxes of cake mix, _brilliant!_ You touch everything with thrilled fascination, like you’re the kid in the candy store, all lights and sounds and colours. 

You pick up a loaf of bread – crumpets? Would he like crumpets? – some snacks for yourself, a twenty-four pack of Evian, a bulk-buy bottle of bleach and some more crepe bandages. On second thought, you pop back to the frozen section for some Ben & Jerry’s. 

Cart half-full, you queue at the checkout. The overhead radio sounds cheerier than it normally is, the shoppers around you happier. So many different people, and you’ll never see them again; won’t hear about their rubbish day at work or the date they’re getting ready for tonight, won’t know if they’re celebrating or struggling to pay their bills. 

Beside you, three toddlers hang off the end of two trolleys, each piled high with generic-brand specials. Their mum bumps into you by accident and apologises profusely, kids waving sticks of gum and action figures in her face as she does. 

‘Sorry—no no, it’s fine,’ you splutter, ‘don’t worry about it,’ and try to wave them ahead of you in line. It sets off an awkward dance as they apologise, and then you apologise and insist some more, like two drivers at a right-hand turn, before they finally accept your offer to go first. 

The lady operating the checkout is middle-aged, greying, and too full of life for someone who’s spent years on a soulless minimum wage. She’s optimistic and maternal in equal measures, bubbly, and probably a little cheeky at the corporate Christmas party. You’d love to be like that when you’re sixty.

‘Cash or card, love?’ she says, bringing up your total.

‘Card,’ you reply, wearing a taped-on smile – what you’d really like to say is that you’re sorry she’s stuck here, you hope she hasn’t had any horrid customers today, you’d like to chat and give her some human interaction instead of feeding her lines from the corporate script – but you know her day will go faster if you keep to the pleasantries. 

You reach out to tap the machine, hoping it doesn’t decline. That’d be embarrassing. The Doctor’s blood is caked under your nails as you key in the pin. 

She hands you the receipt, and you scramble together your slapdash collection of bags with a wave. ‘Thank you so much!’ 

You hiss a little as you balance a bag off your forearm, cutting into the bruise, and stagger away under the weight of your shop. 

-

You watch videos on your phone before you fall asleep, and cat videos become animal documentaries, become stars and planets, and outer space becomes research into compartment syndrome.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No specific warnings. Just honest-to-god sadness at the fact that this is 10K, and I'm upset that I can pump it out on pulp fiction while my beloved, worthy WIPs languish. Thank you to all the lovely people who have commented, and made me think: okay, maybe there's some value in posting this. 
> 
> I'm wrong, there's one specific thing to mention. I really don't aim to paint OCD as something associated with sadism or being a "psychopath". I think anxiety and OCD are the ugly consequence of a character who is otherwise meticulous, introverted, cautious - and deeply, deeply unhappy. As much as I _don't_ want you to see yourself in the Reader, I want you to be able to relate. Presumably, you read this far for one reason or another!

He startles when you arrive. Within him is a frantic energy, darting off his skin like the skitters of light behind closed eyes. Whether he’s mustered some enthusiasm, or he’s just desperate, you’ll have to find out. 

You’d give him some sort of greeting, but he knows what time it is. 

‘You know,’ the Doctor says, his voice unsteady at first, ‘This is usually the part where people start asking me questions.’ He shifts, attempting a casual gesture that might have fooled someone, if he weren’t in such obvious pain. ‘ _Open the TARDIS,_ or, _show us how to operate this superweapon_ ,’ he says, adding dramatic inflection with quite some effort. Pausing for thought – if you weren’t keenly aware he’s had over a day to think – he adds, ‘Or, _tell me the secret of regeneration._ Come to think of it, none of those are really questions.’

Either he has a little more left in him than you realised, or he really is just wasting his strength on being jovial. 

It’s dangerous, and utterly irresistible. It had always seemed so fanciful; talking himself out of trouble, time and time again. Now you realise you aren’t the only one who gets swept away. When the Doctor talks, _everyone_ wants to listen. You’re not special. 

The thought is sour, almost unbearably so. 

‘Would you give me any answers?’ you settle for, an evasive response that neither takes the chessboard away from him, nor satisfies your need for his attention. 

He seamlessly reroutes his efforts, earnest and immediate, a promise written on his face. ‘It’s just you, isn’t it? There’s nobody else.’

He’s right – he must _know_ he’s right, too, so there can’t be much harm in agreeing, but it doesn’t matter anyway, because you’ve spent too much time on what should be an automatic answer – so you admit the truth, and nod. 

His face shivers, a grimace eclipsing his eager optimism until what can only be pain releases him again. His eyes are huge, imploring as he leans forward in the chains, voice so gentle it is almost timid. ‘You must have family, friends.’

‘Of course I do,’ you say, unbothered, knowing where this goes. ‘And you? What would _your_ family and friends think, if you told them everything you’d done?’ 

This realisation does not hit the Doctor, like so many others have. It sinks into him slowly, like a skewer through treacle. With exquisite care, it parts deeper into his mind; re-remembering the family he has forgotten, the reasons they are gone, the decisions he has made to ensure no other outcome remained. The second horror blossoms at the base of that widening chasm: that you _know_. 

‘So that’s what this is, then?’ the Doctor breathes, brow deeply furrowed, momentarily too absorbed in the answer to a puzzle to be disturbed. ‘Revenge?’ 

You laugh, not unkindly, because you could think of far better ways to exact revenge if you wanted – and by now, he’s done nearly all of them to himself. 

‘No,’ you say. ‘I’m not here to judge you.’ 

The Doctor doesn’t waver, that persistence when he’s so _close_ to an answer, the solution dangling only just out of reach. ‘Then what?’ he asks, sadness spilt over genuine curiosity. 

You consider this. There’s not much point explaining; he already knows what you’re going to say. Deep down, he does. But he’s hoping against all hope he’s wrong. 

The next question, the unspoken one, is _why_. It’s this one you choose to address. ‘It’s like,’ you say, fumbling for the right words, or even for passable ones, the entire English language abruptly inadequate. ‘It’s like an atom. You can do all sorts of things with an atom. You can sit there and watch it bounce around, travelling through matter, reacting with everything it comes across.’ He looks ready to interrupt, but you’ve finally put your thumb on it, so you continue. ‘You could experiment for the rest of your life and learn how to turn lead into gold, and none of it would matter. The atom means nothing compared to what happens when you _split_ it.’

The Doctor immediately falls back on banter – and that’s how you know he’s caught. ‘I’m not quite sure that’s what Otto was talking about. And he _really_ wasn’t fond of war crimes.’

‘This isn’t war,’ you snort. 

With visible difficulty, the Doctor swallows. ‘Well, go on then. Do whatever it is you have to do.’

This rankles. It isn’t the dismissal, the endless bluffing until something sticks. It isn’t having your morality brute-forced by guesses like a weak password. It’s that he thinks – and he does – that you’re compelled by some madness, something too inane to be worth comprehending. 

And you can’t make him. You can make him desperate enough to try and puzzle it out, pass the Turing test, but that’s all it’ll be. Imitating. 

As you glare at him, aware that you’re giving away too much, and not finding it within yourself to care, you finally notice. 

The bucket is missing. 

‘What did you—’ you snarl, reflexive, even as your eyes dart around the room. How could he _possibly_ —

—Ah. You spot it crumpled in a corner, one side broken, the cracks highlighted in that blanched, stretched warp of cheap plastic. You imagine him trapped by his own frustration, kicking it savagely across the room, heedless of his injury. One of the bandages around his left ankle is even falling off. 

Well. Do whatever it is you have to do, indeed.

You haven’t brought much with you today, and you’re bitterly regretting it. The knife is wrapped in a clean towel, dragging the corner of the bag down awkwardly. A packet of crumpets has rolled into the divot, mocking you.

You’d planned to take a look at his hands, wary of things like infection and gangrene, but his mouth is pinched at the corner in agitated disapproval and you want him raw and urgent and pleading with you.

Almost, you _almost_ give in and take it. That’s the problem. There’s nothing stopping you: only the knowledge that if you act in anger, if you make yourself out to be the mindless psychopath he thinks of you, one he can discard into the box where he keeps the universe’s various mistakes, then you’ll never have what you want. 

It’s only been three days. You take a deep breath, and remember the power at your disposal. Yours, but never forget his.

You unfold the cloth carefully, taking the knife in hand and tucking the towel in your back pocket. The Doctor is making an enormous show of not caring and condemning you at the same time. It lasts until you’re within range, blade angled towards him, when the barest twitch passes through his jaw. 

‘Don’t move,’ you say, still curt. And after a brief hesitation, to make sure he’s still determined to turn pity on you instead of violence, you grab his arm and look to his right hand.

Paper-thin curls of blackened flesh have split over the back of his hand, bursting beneath the pressure to reveal waxen-grey leather underneath. The charred cast of skin bulges around his palm, dangerously swollen, a red, angry line of demarcation dipping beneath the shackle where the dead flesh meets that which remains viable. You roll back his shirtsleeve, forearm cording under your grasp as the Doctor tenses, wants to resist you, can’t. 

He makes an uncomfortable, quiet noise as you take hold of his wrist and turn it this way and that, examining. Of the skin that is intact, blisters spread across it like plaques, some of them ruptured and weeping sticky straw-coloured fluid. Other parts of his hand are completely denuded, some to muscle; a cut of meat dried-out after too long in the fridge. 

Resistance momentarily forgotten, the Doctor twists his head to see what you’re doing, and immediately regrets it. You can see the bile sticking in his throat as he swallows, face suddenly gaunt, lips clamped shut. 

He shudders in the chains, and it’s clear that he’s trying to clench his fists – it’s just that there isn’t much left of his fingertips but char and bone. It’s disturbing to see that he can _still_ flex them, ever so slightly, the mechanical pull of tendons peeking through the broken skin of his knuckles. 

He withers from the sight, a tremor crossing his face that isn’t fear nor pain, and minutely adjusts his balance. _Not falling_ seems to have regained top priority.

You’d be feeling squeamish, too, if you weren’t so absorbed in your work. Touching what used to be skin, but is now too unrecognisable to be called flesh at all, you long for gloves. You press at the misshapen mass of his palm, finding it wooden, so tight it resists your thumbprint entirely. The Doctor winces, but it isn’t clear how much he feels, and how much is a reaction to the visual stimulus of where pain ought to be found. 

You’ve been researching this, and you don’t want his hands to drop off. Never mind that he might inexplicably regrow them, you need those to keep him restrained, and to keep him invested in the idea of protecting them against further damage. 

How hard can it be? You adjust your grip on the knife – too big, far too big for this sort of delicate work, and try to position him so you can get access to the back of his hand.

‘Don’t,’ the Doctor blurts, as if he’s been holding onto the protest for too long, and now it’s slipped out of his grasp, ‘Don’t, you can’t—you’ve got to stop,’ and he jerks to one side, twisting out of your hold, falling and nearly nicking himself on the blade. 

He muffles his cry as, again, the cuffs punish his wrists, a grape-sized blister near the base of his thumb bursting, trickling fluid beneath his sleeve. 

It’s only when you loop your arm around his waist, knife still in hand, that he shouts. He’s so small, his middle fitting almost entirely in the crook of your elbow, but so disproportionately heavy that you can hardly lift him. He fights you, with nowhere to go, and no leverage to be had. 

As you press yourself against his body, both pleasure and logic forgotten in the need to make him _stay still_ , something lances into the soft muscle of your calf. You rear back, shocked, seeing the knife still firmly in your palm, and _god_ , if it doesn’t hurt like a bitch. 

Two steps back, and you collapse onto your backside, immediately spotting the jagged piece of plastic lodged in your leg. All those medical instructions not to remove foreign objects may as well be nursery rhymes; you rip it out in an instant, cursing, rolling up your jeans to assess the damage. 

It isn’t as bad as it feels; a shallow gash and a puncture no deeper than your fingertip. It just hurts. 

The Doctor doesn’t sound as happy as you’d be in his situation, his crippled groans more defeat than triumph. 

You ought to be annoyed, if not downright infuriated, whether at him or yourself, but you’re not. An odd calm washes over you: adrenaline, endorphins – or, perhaps, just affection. You press a hand to the wound while you examine the plastic shard. 

Clever. Clever, and well-improvised. Stamping on that bucket, cracking it until he could break off a piece – hiding it, you realise, lashed to the sole of his foot by the bandage like an arrowhead with twine. 

You grin at him, thrilled and delighted, and he looks back with a determined sort of trepidation, aching as he tries to find that elusive balance point midway along his heels. The position seems to hurt worse than hanging. Maybe he _really_ doesn’t like being shorter. 

‘You really are incredible,’ you say, breathless. ‘How long did that take? God, it must have hurt.’

The Doctor seems taken aback. ‘Well, I try not to make a fuss.’

The wound is still bleeding, but you ignore it in order to get back on your feet and reassess him. Another close call, and you still don’t know whether he’s really even _trying_. Whether he’ll hurt you, really hurt you once his patience runs out, a probability approaching inevitability the longer you spend near him. 

But it hasn’t gone unnoticed that he only hurts you in self-defence.

You play to that, as you say, ‘I need to do something about your hands before they drop off. You can tell me what else you’re hiding, or I can strip search you,’ indicating the knife for good measure. 

He grimaces, relents at the thought. ‘That’s it,’ he says. ‘I don’t have anything else.’

You believe him. You’re sure he’s lying, too, but he’s so _easy_ to believe. A quick glance at his other foot shows an intact bandage, dark stain marked out in layers of crepe. 

Leg stinging, palm sweaty on the hilt of the knife, you steel yourself for another blow as you approach him. It doesn’t come. It might yet.

He shudders when you take hold of that unnatural, stiff limb, eyes tracing a line down your arm to your face. You’re not sure what sort of expression you wear, trying to guide an unsteady concentration into your fingers, which are a little coarse with adrenaline. 

‘Couldn’t have thought of this before you torched me?’ he mutters, injecting brevity into his voice like an eyedropper into a bathtub.

You rotate his hand as best you can, finding the knuckles and mentally tracing their bones to the wrist. ‘I did,’ you say, soft with distraction. ‘Did you?’ 

He doesn’t respond, too busy shutting his mouth tight as you try to bring the unwieldy point of the knife to the back of his hand. Just like the videos. 

You can feel an aborted flicker of movement travel up from his shoulder, guttering out somewhere around his forearm where the mechanics stop working. ‘Stay still. I don’t want to hurt you,’ you lie. 

You don’t sound that convincing. He must _really_ want to believe you. 

The dead skin beneath his knuckles is so overstretched, you expect it to burst beneath the knife like an overripe tomato. But it’s tough as pigskin, the texture compressed and hard, and you really have to press. Once you pierce the outer layer, it breaks apart like a rubber band left too long in the sun, snapping where it should stretch.

The flesh doesn’t bleed, and judging by the queasy disbelief on the Doctor’s face, it doesn’t hurt, either. Beneath the cut, you can just about see the glistening membrane of what looks like healthy tissue, catching the light within like glimpsing the pearl inside the oyster. 

This should release enough pressure to stave off the gangrene – according to Wikipedia, that is. But who knows if you’ve done it right, or if it’ll even work, or if his body even needs it. Maybe you ought to make an experiment out of it, and leave the other hand alone for comparison. 

But there is something intimate about this; the caretaking. The Doctor, allowing you to nick the biggest blisters and coax the skin to lie flat, giving you the privilege of working together instead of antagonising each other. It drives you to the insanity of unbuttoning his shirt cuff, folding it out of the way and pressing it gently under the sleeve of his jacket, just to touch, to comfort him. 

He senses your tenderness, seizes on it like a port in a storm. Those huge, warm eyes, finding yours and taking them by the shoulders. 

‘Let me go,’ he says, not quite pleading. ‘That’s all you need to do.’

Compassionate, you realise. He’s being _kind_. 

He’s always kind. But you’ve learnt half your kindness from him; and half the time, it looks like cruelty. 

You want to play along, pretend you’re the version of yourself that he might love. Give in to your conflict, bubbling up and spilling out into the bottomless well of his forgiveness. Moved by his suffering, scared of what you’ve become. You’d unchain him in a fury, unable to waste another second, promise him you’ll get him out of here, rescue his friends, be brave and fierce and selfless. You’ll run together, and one day, you’ll die in a blaze of glory. Or you’ll live long enough to see him abandon you to the prison of a life you’d left behind, a despair more absolute than any death. 

You grieve for that, as you say, ‘I can’t.’ 

It’s telling that he immediately drops his eyes from yours, like he’s finally made it to the rubbish bin with a rotting vegetable. 

That doesn’t matter. It won’t last long. 

You circle around him. So much tension in his body, every muscle recruited to keep him contained. It’s impossible to decide if you’re going to break him yourself, or if you should let the slow inevitability of exhaustion wear him down. 

Your fingers are still hovering at his shirt cuff, damp and stained, when you decide it’s time to unwrap him. You slip the point of the knife inside the sleeve of his jacket – he snaps off a cry of surprise, flinching, and you realise the point of the knife has snagged something fleshy along its way. 

He opens his mouth, about to speak, perhaps _what are you doing_ or _stop,_ or _that thing’s an enormous health and safety violation,_ but decides against it, sacrificing a reaction for the chance to prepare himself. He worries too much. 

You rotate the blade to slit his suit jacket from the inside out, shucking him like an oyster. He twists sharply, tension rocketing from his shoulder and down his torso, a struggle he’d like to make but can’t afford.

‘Do you really have to—’ the Doctor says, irritation prickling into his voice, enough of it that you could believe he’d rather have his beloved suit in one piece than himself. 

You give the question some thought as you saw a ragged line through the seam. ‘No,’ you say, at first, and then, ‘Well, sooner or later, yes.’

‘I might catch a cold,’ he says, aiming for nonchalance, but his voice is too tight, and you have to jostle and tug the fabric from behind him. 

He’s resigned himself as you tear the knife through the other armhole, stepping away in order to fold up what’s left of the jacket and place it in your bag, heavier than it had felt on his shoulders. 

Clad in a shirt that is too big for him and trousers that are too small, he looks uncomfortably naked. Sweat has spread across his shirt in swathes, making the fabric cling stickily along his sides. 

You toy with the idea of undressing him further, but you think that at this stage, baring skin would only depreciate his nudity.

You approach him, and he shrinks from you; like a blast of hot air after leaving the shopping mall in a heatwave, like you are the blinding light to his headache. Keeping what distance he can, he tolerates you doing your best to divide the stricture of burnt skin around his hand. You touch the raw, shining floor of a freshly-drained blister, aware that every ridge and whorl of your fingertip must feel like acid, and he shivers from thinned lips to his throat. 

All too soon, the work is done. Necessity no longer guides your hand, nor his cooperation. 

Your fingers tighten around the hilt of the knife, gesturing with it vaguely over your shoulder. ‘You want a crumpet? I can toast some.’

The Doctor sighs, worn, allowing his head fall back against the cinderblock. ‘I want you to let me _go._ ’ 

This familiar, dogged resistance brings clarity. Where the path forward had been undefined, he lays out the terms. He sounds _tired_ , a battle of attrition he’s well-placed to win. 

‘I take it that’s a no,’ you quip, and immediately misjudge. He’s silent. Like meeting up with an old friend when they’ve lost a job, he carries on a wordless conversation with the ceiling instead. 

He forces a slow breath, shifting minutely, face too drawn to let anything slip. 

It comes down to his ribs. Jutting out, hollow as a fowl’s breastbone, their outlines trace through the flimsy cotton. A fragile wire-frame, lifebreath held precious beneath the surface. 

You want to just—

—the need slips down the base of your spine like a chill: _you can._

Hard, you grip hard, and push him back against the wall and swing your hand down, the knife’s edge falling across his chest and rending skin. His cry tears into the air, harsh and abrupt, breaths interrupted by the divide you’ve carved between them. 

He fights you, instinctive and so urgent to be entirely ineffectual, slipping against you as he tries to pull away, an ankle rolling grotesquely. 

Now, _now_ you take hold of his shirt, adrenaline giving you the strength to tear the buttons open. You want to see too badly to take your time, you want to press your fingers into the hole and prise him open, you want, you want—

He isn’t looking away. He’s staring wide-eyed at the blade in your hand and the way you redouble your grip, and you think he might be afraid, he might be genuinely afraid at what he sees in you, and nobody’s ever been afraid of you before. 

The cut is both neat and irregular, trailing over his side like a ribbon, blossoming where the bone beneath has provided counterforce to the knife. A trickle of blood collects at the base of the wound, disappearing along the gutter of his hip, but you aren’t interested by it. He chokes at your index finger, delving as deep into the cut as it can, trying to find purchase. You’re surprised to find there isn’t any give, even as he twists and widens the space further; firm, refrigerator-cold tissue resisting your touch on every side. It feels like trying to prod apart a half-thawed chicken.

You pull back only to line yourself up, the knife’s edge slotting naturally between a pair of ribs, and you begin to cut. Slowly, this time, the blade popping through the skin, descending as it begins to glide through the softer flesh beneath. He screams, then, a strangled noise that starts high-pitched and biting, and as you curve the knife towards his breastbone and cut slower, deeper still, his scream dies out in a guttural, dying moan. You stop when he runs out of breath. 

Blood has already made your fingers slippery, coating the knife, his side. It falls heavily from the wound, racing down his front and over his trousers, spreading along the inseam and splattering noisily on the floor like he’s urinating instead of bleeding. 

Little wet droplets splash up where they impact the floor. One strikes you on the cheek. It keeps going, a puddle dripping into a pool. 

You’ve never seen so much blood in your life. Judging by the blanched horror on his face, he might not have, either. 

The confidence, the soaring high drops from you like a stone. You’re terrified, suddenly as powerless as he is. You have no idea what to do. You have _no idea what to do_. He’s pleading at you, gasping, drowning—is he, is he going to drown on it?—and you’re just standing there, paralysed. 

You need your phone. You need to get to your phone, you need to breathe—you need to _Google_. 

Hands, wet on the bag, sticky as they shake on the door, you leave. No matter what, you don’t forget to lock it. You scrabble with the keys.

  
  


The answer you’re looking for is _direct pressure_. You knew that. You knew that, even as a child, and yet somehow you’d utterly forgotten it in your panic. 

The thought is not just sobering; it’s like having your strings cut. 

As you grab three, four, however many bandages you have _(four, you count, you can’t not count)_ you run over it in your mind. Over, and over, counting the actions like you keep counting the bandages, your punishment for avoiding the thought even for a second. You feel like your body is collapsing after being possessed. 

Possessed, by something beyond you, pushing you aside while you stood and watched, taking the wheel and flooring the accelerator. It was fun. It’s always fun to drive fast. And you were out of control.

How many mistakes have you made, now? 

Have you lost _count_? 

Control is etched into you with thought after grating thought, but you can’t get a grasp on it. With difficulty, you reason that if he isn’t dead yet, a few more moments won’t make much difference. Instead of rushing in head-first, you make yourself take the time to spy on him through the hole in the wall.

The blood isn’t splashing onto the floor anymore, and he’s struggling. Hard. 

Do you trust yourself? Enough to go in there, manage the contradiction of emergently tending to him, make the narrative cohesive enough to bend him over it, snap him? 

No. Not after that. 

So you don’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thrive on reactions! Tell me what you loved & hated, I enjoy both equally :)

**Author's Note:**

> Ha, the anon tag is useless, you've all figured out who I am by now :P
> 
> Please do comment, because this is _total_ drawerfic, and I'm still very uncertain whether it ought to stay that way or be let out into the world!


End file.
